November 21, 2007
From SATA-Peru-2007
Today we got a look at the not-so-glorious part of the Amazon: resource extraction. We went to a nearby river boat that was extraction gold from the sediments on the bottom of the river bank. As it turns out, this really is like finding a needle in a haystack.
We spoke with Roger, a mid-thirties man from the Apurimac region (one of the poorest regions in Peru) who has been working on the river for about 10 years. We somehow all managed to fit on the small boat and learned how the process worked. The process starts with the “gringo” (which is the Spanish word for white person – when we asked while it was called the “gringo” he said because it is long and tall). The “gringo” is a long pole that is attached to a wide tube. The “gringo” holds the tube down underwater and allows the operator to move it along the bottom of the river, sucking up sediments and rocks. The sediments and rocks get pumped up from the bottom of the river to a filter on the boat, that removes any large rocks or pebbles and spits those back into the river. This is why you can see large mountains of pebbles along this section of the river, remnants of the gold mining. The watery mud that makes it through the filter is passed over a long slide covered in carpet. The carpet is what catches the gold specs.
Two people work on the boat, taking 5 hour shifts. After 20 hours of continuos motor running (sucking up the sediments and passing it over the carpet), the carpets get squeezed out into a big barrel. What ends up are tiny fine particles of sand and a few scattered pieces of gold flakes.
This is where we were all shocked. Mercury is then poured into the barrel and mixed by hand (no gloves) and binds to the few gold flakes. The whole things gets passed through a cloth. The gold is collected in the cloth and the Mercury is collected and reused.
We asked if he was aware of the dangers of Mercury and he said that he´d been told, but what was he supposed to do? He said he still felt fine and healthy (although we noticed a severe tremble in his arms and hands). We also asked if there were any ecological effects (to the river, the fish, the shoreline, etc) and he said no, there aren´t any.
Later in the afternoon, we went to Boca Amigo, a small port town on the Amigos River. We had a short information session about the town and the community. And then we went to the school. The teacher rang the school bell and 5 minutes later, 8 school children were there in the classroom telling us about their project "Bosque de los Ninos" (The Kid's Forest). This experience made me really want a homestay sister about that age to practice my spanish with. Most of their's was better than mine. Anyway, they told us about how they are interested in protecting the forest, the plants and the animals. Each student in this one-room school house has there own small parcel of land where they grow some veggies and medicinal plants. The kids went around and introduced themselves (after some initial shyness) and then we did the same thing. They even sang a song for us about saving the forest and conserving nature. We returned with a song about animals and animal noises in Quechua (which we'd learned in Cusco).
After our time in the school house, we went to a nearby cocha (oxbow lake) and went swimming with the caimans, piranas, and anacondas. Mike put me on my shoulders and launched me into a backflip. It was an interesting day of the "social sciences" (a nice break from the hard sciences we've been doing). It's always fascinating for me to see how other people live and make a living.
